Unplugging for Sabbath: Interview with David Miller

Great interview with former Lubbock mayor and dear friend David Miller about our need for #sabbath.  David talks about how he unplugged from the craziness of the world with a 2 week trip into the jungle and the vision that came out of it . . .

http://kttz.org/post/faith-matters-david-miller

Last night I was privileged to share in a Passover Seder with dear friends. We read from the Reformed Haggadah where God chastised the angels for their shouts of joy at the Egyptians' drowning. Sometimes freedom comes at the end of so great a nightmare and at so great a cost that the shouting of anything - including the shout of victory - rings falsely. Only silence is true. May we never forget.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/27/nyregion/rabbi-herschel-schacter-

The Faith of Teenagers: Nice or Life-changing?

In preparation for our search for a new minister of youth, I have been reading Kenda Creasy Dean's book Almost Christian: What the Faith of our Teenagers is Telling the American Church.  In the book, Dean analyses data gathered in the national Study of Youth and Religion — the broad-reaching 2003-2005 study of spirituality among American youth. The good news in Dean's analysis is that youth are generally a lot less hostile to religion than we adults suspect. The bad news is that they are also a lot less passionate about their own personal faith than we would hope for. Even more sobering, Dean says the problem with teenage faith (or lack thereof) is really the problem of church faith (or lack thereof). To borrow an old line from a famous anti-drug commercial, our teenagers are "learning it by watching [us]".

 

Dean labels the primary religion of American teenagers as a faith in the god of something she calls Moralistic Therapeutic Deism (MTD). Dean says the fundamental beliefs of MTD are: 1. A god exists who created and orders the world and watches over life on earth. 2. God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions. 3. The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself. 4. God is not involved in my life except when I need God to resolve a problem. 5. Good people go to heaven when they die. With the exception of the implications of number four, MTD seem to be generally positive religious tenets. But for Dean — and for me — that generality is a problem. There is no mention of the particularity of the God who comes to us in the story of Abraham, Israel, and ultimately the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  

 

When I read about MTD, I think of H. Richard Niebuhr's critique of the faith of 20^th century social liberalism:  "A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross."  Though my own theologically liberal side wants to substitute the word "wrath" with the word "passion," I agree that Niebuhr's general sentiment is true and I think it shares the same power failure as that of MTD. In the end, what we get is a god who is vague, distant, none-too-demanding, and, ultimately, none-too-important. As Dean writes, "If this is the god we offer young people, there may be little in Christianity to which they object, but there is even less to which they will be devoted." The Bible calls this a luke-warm faith.

 

 

In one-on-one interviews with young people in the study, Dean said youth described God as being above all things "nice" and wanting us to be nice also. This is of course all very well and nice, but it doesn't quite lift the luggage. Having a "nice" God who wants us to be nice also is a far cry from the God whose passion runs so deep for us that He came to die for us and calls for us to die to ourselves as well. Dean says we sell our youth short when we assume ministry with youth is all about making things "fun." She says our aim ought to be higher. She closes the book with a quote from nineteenth-century Daniel Burnham:

 

Make no small plans. They have no magic to stir humanity's blood and probably themselves will not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work . . . . Remember that our sons and daughters are going to do things that will stagger us. Let your watchword be order and your beacon, beauty. Think big.

 

 

Reading this book has not only been good for my purposes on the search committee but also for my purposes as a father. It has helped me to understand how desperately I want my own children not only to believe in God generally, but to have an abundant and life-giving relationship with Him.

 

Yesterday I had a father and his daughter in my office discussing a faith decision the young daughter is in the process of making. At the close of the meeting the father, daughter, and I held hands in a circle and I prayed. As I prayed, the thought of this father and his daughter overwhelmed me and tears suddenly began running down my cheeks and onto the table between us. It occurred to me that the prayer I was praying for this man's daughter is the same prayer my soul is praying for my own daughter and two sons — that they might come to know God — not a mushy, vague, "nice" God— but rather that they might know the God who is so wildly in love with them that He, too, shed tears for them in Gethsemane and blood for them on Calvary. He is the God who died for us; and He is the God who is worth our living and dying for also.

 

 

And my question as a father and pastor is this: Are our kids seeing that kind of passionate life and death in me?                                                                

What Pastors Do

2013 has arrived and this column has me thinking of what I shall do with the new year.

 

I am prompted by a question that was asked of me not long ago by my five-year-old daughter Gabrielle. "What do pastors do all day?" Perhaps, dear reader, you have wondered the same.

 

I sought to answer the question for Gabrielle by taking her with me on a pastoral visit to see a friend from church, one of our more elderly, "homebound" members. This is a woman who has long been a member here at Second B, but whose failing body makes it near impossible to come most Sundays. As is often said, "The spirit is willing; but the flesh is weak."

 

As we pulled into the driveway a Lubbock Police Department officer was outside. My friend had earlier been backing her car out of the driveway and had hit a parked car on the other side of the street. "Well," I thought, "this is either incredibly bad or incredibly good timing."

 

We parked and came inside along with the police officer behind us. He was gentle and kind, but not patronizing. He issued the citation, shook each of our hands and then went along his way. Left alone, we now said what must always be said in times like these, "Atleast no one was hurt."

 

We sat down and began to talk about the difficulties of growing old. This was the first wreck my friend had ever been in that was her fault. Neither she nor I said it, but I am sure both thought it - that perhaps accident was another of the tolls of old age. She looked at Gabrielle. "Do you feel good, hon?" she asked, "I bet you do." Gabrielle nodded her head yes. I thought to myself how neither Gabrielle nor I really know what it is to feel bad.

 

Then I looked down at what I had brought with me. In a plain, brown-paper sack I carried the signs of a savior who knew what it is to feel bad - to have a spirit that is willing, but flesh that is week. Inside the bag were the elements of the Lord's Supper.

 

"O, communion," my friend said, "it has been so long since I took it. I am so glad you brought it."

 

I explained to her that in our understanding of the meal we are okay with Gabrielle taking part because she knows that it means something more than a bread and juice - but that it is a sign of Jesus' suffering. "Yes," she said, "I think that's wonderful."

 

We gathered together around a makeshift table and prayed. Then I said the words of institution, "The body of Christ broken for you; the blood of Christ poured out for you." We ate the bread and drank the juice and words from a great hymn came to my mind. I looked at my friend and began to sing,

"One sweet morning when this life is over,

I'll fly away

To a land on God's celestial shore,

I'll fly away

 

Hearing the old, familiar words tears began to well in my friend's eyes. "When you get my age, that's how you feel. You're ready to fly away. I'm ready to fly away. I'm ready to be with Jesus.

 

We sat there in the silence of that holy moment and then I looked at Gabrielle. "Gabrielle," I said, "she's ready to go and see Jesus. Do you want her to tell him anything?"

 

Gabrielle nodded. "Tell him I love him."

 

"I will honey," my friend said, "I'm sure he already knows it; but it will be good to hear it."

 

We said our goodbyes, I gave a parting prayer, and then Gabrielle and I walked out the door. On the way back to the car I paused at the garage and looked down at her. "That, Gabby, is what pastors do," I told her.

 

May our sons and daughters find us all doing what we do best in 2013.

Drive Screwtape Mad

I have been re-reading C.S. Lewis's classic The Screwtape Letters.  It's a series of letters from Screwtape, a senior demon, to his junior nephew demon Wormwood on how best to tempt Wormwood's human "patient".  Screwtape and Wormwood are basically the opposite of a guardian angels.  They are - quite literally - hell's angels.  And Screwtape is passing on the tricks of the trade.  

Lewis's insight into the spiritual life was absolutely brilliant.  In The Screwtape Letters Lewis has Screwtape reflecting on the ways Wormwood might seduce his subject into perdition through the most ordinary of events.  Sin isn't always what we humans think.  In fact, Screwtape suggests that it is actually beneficial to the forces of darkness that we humans stand guard against mortal temptation in order that our more venal sins can slip through the back door.  "Murder is no better than cards if cards can do the trick," Screwtape writes.  "Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one - the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts. . ."

In one particularly vivid seen Screwtape tells of having once had as a patient an atheist, who while studying a book suddenly began to ponder spiritual questions.  Fearing that he might be in danger of losing the patient to heaven, Screwtape acted fast through a gentle pang of hunger.  Having been diverted away from the consideration of deeper, more eternal matters, the patient never turned back again.

Falling out of relationship with God is so seldom the result of one singularly grave or heinous sin.  Really, its generally a lot more dull than that.  It's one step at a time, one glance at a time, one simple diversion from which we never come back.  

Counteract this: stop right now and center on God for a couple of minutes.  Sing an old hymn.  Pray for somebody you love.  Pray for somebody you don't.  Do this again for two minutes before the day is out.  Repeat tomorrow.  

Screwtape hates that!

What Difference Does Baptism Make?

   Sunday I taught the first of a two-part series for children who have either recently been baptized or are considering it.

 

   We began by talking about decisions. Each of the kids talked about a decision they had made that morning - the decision to get up and come to Sunday School, the decision to wear the clothes they were wearing, etc. We then turned in our Bibles to the third chapter of the book of Luke where we read about all the people of Judea and Jerusalem who came down to be baptized by John the Baptist in the Jordan River. We read how John was "preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins," and I told them how I believe repentance means turning away from selfish ways and deciding to go where God wants us to go and become who God created us to be. We talked about what that would look like in our lives. There was lots of talk about being nice to siblings and obeying parents. An especially precocious boy talked about being productive and "contributing to the economy". His dad has an MBA. Then there was the funny moment when the three boys in class who have been baptized were asked if they still sin. They're gaping eyes and mouths gave them away.

 

    Then yesterday at our Tuesday morning men's breakfast the lesson was again on baptism. This time Penny Vann was leading and he was using theologian Jim McClendon's idea of baptism as a "performative sign". By that McClendon meant that like a stop sign tells us to stop, the sign of baptism tells the world that we intend for our lives to belong to God. At baptism we declare ourselves - in the words of the Apostle Paul - "dead to sin and alive in Christ."

 

    Well, the two conversations - one by 10-year-olds and another by 50, 60, 70 and 80-year-olds - were certainly on different levels. But the questions were substantively the same. What is baptism? What does it mean to repent of our sins? Can we be so alive in Christ that the sin in us truly dies?

 

    These questions make me think of a scene in one of the great Texas films of all-time Tender Mercies. Robert Duvall plays a broken down, honky tonk cowboy named Max Sledge (can you think of a better name for a broken down, honky tonk cowboy?). Duvall meets a woman whose love and gentle spirit set him in the right direction. Soon we see him in church being baptized along with his new stepson. On the way back the two ride side by side in Max's pickup. Max looks over and asks his stepson, "Do you feel any different?" "Nope," the boy says. "Do you?" "Not yet," Max answers back.

 

    The key word I think is "yet". Max and his stepson and the boys in my class have all just recently declared who they are going to be. They've just decided. Now all the decisions that follow are to be based upon that first, big decision. They don't feel any different yet - but they have made it known that their intention is to be different.

 

    As I looked around at those men on Tuesday morning, I know they still sin. But I also know they are indeed "different" from what they once were. They're gentler now. They're more loving now. They're sober now. They're no longer consumed with success now. In other words, they've been baptized - dead to sin and alive in Christ.

 

    I remember what some saint somewhere once said, "I ain't what I ought to be. I ain't what I'm gonna be. But thank God I ain't what I was." It's true for the men on Tuesday morning. May it be true for the kids on Sunday also.

A Sprig of Life for Muslim/Christian Relations

On Monday I was a guest alongside Imam Samer Altaaba on Fox Talk 950, a local morning radio talk show. We were invited on to discuss the need for increased Muslim-Christian relations in the wake of the violent Middle East uprisings which ended in the murders of Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans in Libya.  (A link to an audio recording of the interview is available at http://www.centralmediaserver.com/kjtv/radio/monftim2.mp3 until next Monday.)

 

The imam has condemned the embassy attacks and similar acts of violence. Like most Muslims, he is a person of peace and goodwill.  Unfortunately, religious extremists and political opportunists overshadow the vast majority of Muslims. I hoped the interview would help Lubbock hear another voice.

 

In our conversation I spoke about a man named Krister Stendahl, a Lutheran priest who served as Dean of Harvard Divinity School and did much to promote inter-religious dialogue last century. Stendahl said that when we enter into conversations with people of other faiths we should follow three principles.

 

1.  We should listen to them directly — not to their enemies.

 

2.  We should not compare our own religion's best to the others' worst. This would help us come to terms with the fact that all religions have their good and their bad, their exemplars and their extremists.

 

3.  We should seek what Stendahl called "Holy Envy."  By this he meant we should look to others' religious devotion and practices and seek to find in them what might inspire our own.

 

The conversation with the imam went well.  We told stories of our own friendship and spoke of ways our two communities have remained open to each other in these turbulent times.  At the conclusion of the interview I talked about losing Ambassador Stevens and our need to honor his sacrifice by seeking to be ambassadors of goodwill ourselves. For with half of humanity being either Christian or Muslim, the fate of the world depends upon it.

 

But perhaps most gratifying about the experience was the Facebook message I received afterward. It was from Justin Gornto, one of the kids in the youth group I once pastored in North Carolina. Justin grew up and joined the Army. He served a tour in Afghanistan, where he was wounded and almost lost his life in an IED attack. Justin learned about the interview on Facebook and streamed it from North Carolina. He wrote me to tell me he appreciated the conversation and hopes for more like it.

 

As I read that note from Justin a wave of hope washed over me. Justin knows first hand how dangerous these days are; yet he remains open to the possibility — indeed necessity — of peacemaking.
 

In the midst of so much violence, terror, and death, it was a real sprig of life.

-Ryon Price